Afghan roads are one wild ride

Jane Armstrong, Globe & Mail, 20 Oct 06

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There are two ways to travel in southern Afghanistan if you’re a foreign reporter – by military convoy or in a hired car. Both have their benefits and perils. Each provides a sharply different perspective of this war-torn region.

Travelling in a military convoy means you’ve put your safety in the hands of the people who are prime targets for insurgents. Nearly every day there is news of an ambush or suicide bomber attack on a convoy of coalition vehicles, which roam the highways ferrying soldiers and supplies to and from the Kandahar airfield.

Despite the many layers of metal protection provided by an armoured vehicle, I always felt safer in the back seat of my fixer’s beat up Toyota Corolla, my Western status obscured with the burka I draped over my body.

In a convoy, everything that moves on the soldier’s horizon is a potential threat. Every car, bicycle or even donkey cart that crosses its path could be driven by a suicide bomber packed with explosives. As a result, convoys barrel along the highways in the centre of the road at full speed, horns blaring. A stalled or slow-moving convoy is a sitting target, so the driver’s goal is to keep moving at all costs. The gunner in the lead vehicle stands in the turret behind his machine gun, frantically waving his arms, ordering cars and people to the side of the road.

In Kandahar city, where a simple traffic snarl is the gravest of threats, drivers push their way through the crowded markets and traffic circles like they’re playing a life-or-death game of bumper cars.

I’ve travelled in enclosed, armoured vehicles like the Bison and in lighter armoured vehicles, such as the Nyala and G-wagon, which have windows. In retrospect, the Bison was the least nerve-wracking. It’s hot and claustrophobic inside, but there’s feeling of safety in not having a clue where you are or what surrounds you.

On my first two journeys off the base I rode in a Bison, squeezed in with half a dozen other soldiers, my eyes on the floor, counting up and down to 100 to pass the time. On my third trip out with the soldiers, I was in a convoy of G-wagons – they look like sturdy SUVs – which left Kandahar last Monday during evening rush hour at 4 p.m. There was no counting on this journey.

The intersection where we were to get on the highway is a busy market, flanked with fruit and vegetable stands, with children and animals darting in and out of traffic. Our convoy was attempting to turn left but a transport truck was inching its way out of the juncture. There appeared to be no way through this squeeze.

Our driver gunned it, ramming the bumper of the G-wagon ahead of us, literally pushing the lead vehicle through the tight spot, scraping the sides of the transport truck. "My heart was pounding," said Sergeant Nicky Bascan, the driver of the third vehicle. "I hate those rides."

Hair-raising as these rides are for soldiers, if you’re an Afghan driver on the highway, or a market stall operator, the convoys that appear out of nowhere are a menacing, thundering sight.

Earlier this month, I was enroute to Kandahar city in the back seat of my fixer’s Corolla, when the driver yanked the steering wheel and careened off the highway, coming to a screeching halt in the ditch. I thought we were under attack.

Instead, it was a parade of sand-coloured Canadian vehicles steaming towards us. The gunner was waving, the horns were blaring. But from this vantage point on the road, what I noticed were the rattled faces of drivers, cyclists and pedestrians, scrambling to move out of the path of the monstrous vehicles.

It looked like they had been invaded.